Originally this was posted in the Q45 section, but I realized with sudden clarity it was meant to be placed here....

Well, it's been a nightmare. I got the car thinking it would be an easy motor swap and have a cool project. After dealing with the horrible swap that CraigsToyz did on the vehicle, I have redone practicaly after part of the swap. I did leave the steering rack Craig put in there...

Anyways, I've started to draw to a conclusion. The details are she’s an 85 RX7 with a 96 VH45. I'm currently in the progress of establishing the wiring. There was no CEL, OBD2 port or knock sensor connected. I've got the FSM and the pin out established, what I am hoping is that someone can tell me where about they split from the harness? I'm hoping to be able to use as much of the OEM wiring as possible. A lot of things are re-wrapped, so I'm hoping if I can narrow it down I won’t need to unravel the entire harness.

Secondly, here are some pictures.
The car:


The reason the motor was blown:


There was some pretty serious wear on the cylinder walls, and at least a .010 over would have been required. The crank had some serious wear on it, and most likely I would have needed the .12 undersized bearing that Infiniti offers. But with pistons being as expensive as they are, I opted to go with a junk yard. After much labor and cleaning, and painting, I wound up with this....



Here are some examples of CraigToyz fine work...
The tranny mounts were welded in, not only were they welded OVER the bolts holding the mount in, they were also welded TO the bolts (that weren't even tight). Guess how much fun the transmission was to cut out? And how many blades I chewed through on the reciprocating saw? 4. Because of the way it was welded up, there was no clean angle to cut. I had to cut away sections at a time, so I nicked the tip quite a bit and either bent or shattered blades. The best weld on the damn car was the bolt that was welded to the rear of the tranny mount.

The other side, which had the muffler welded on to it as well.


The headers/exhaust. Yes, the exhaust actually is the flex-tube aluminum piping, welded right to the header collector and muffler. Not to mention the exhaust was solidly welded to the car, and the the bolts as well were welded to their brackets.







The original motor mounts were made out of pretty thin metal, and not reinforced at all. A simple "L" that was welded on at the very bottom, they were bending needless to say. Not to mention, the motor mounts weren’t even bolting to the mounts. So I removed all of the welds, and created new mounts that were 1/4" steel, on the sides and 1/2" on the top. I did reuse Craig's metal because he did already get the angle for the engine mounts to cradle in. Here are my new mounts...



Here's the engine bay as I'm sanding away all of the oxidation Craig painted over,


And here it is painted


This is me sitting the motor in there to line up the holes for my new mounts



I lined it all up, did some fab work/drilling and here is how she sits now.



As of right now, I need to finish created a tranny mount and I am waiting for all my mandrel pipes to come in from summit so I can make some log style headers, that are...dare I say...flippable

I've got the entire set up designed so that if I decide to boost, I can flip the headers and re-use my entire exhaust set up. I'm hoping to have enough room to slide my headers in without completely removing the motor, but I doubt it will happen.

On the list as well, is to create a way to hold the radiator. Craig was using a plate that was held on by a bolt (with no nuts) and some thick wire, looked like that coated wire coat hanger.

Credits - Jimmy has been a big help in trouble shooting a few things. So thank you, cypher02xd.

Wow!

I've only see a LS motor set in a RX, never a VH!!!!

Awesome swap. The exhaust doesn't look that bad considering you will probably end up replacing it.

Goodluck with the swap!

Well, I'm not even going to attempt to use it. It gets crushed to an outside of maybe 1/2" for a good while, and they fit pretty poorly. I can at least use the headers as a base to create my set up, I'm looking to "lower" mine and tuck it in a little bit closer than the original set up was, which makes them easier to swap, but harder to install/remove. The real trick I've gotten myself into is the intake manifold, I plan to recreate that in the "far but no so far" future. Mainly because the hood sits A LOT lower than the manifold, so a large portion of the hood is cut out to allow fitment. I also would truly like a forward style plenum and top feeds. But, I want to get a running EMS on the vehicle before then. May never even get to it.

This is going to be a build to watch!

We'll see how the cash flow goes - once I get the vehicle running, an EMS is the first thing I really want to tackle. There are no options I have discovered for the OBDII VH motors as far as plug n play, so I'm ideally looking at either a megasquirt or perhaps an AEM set up. I've previously used accel, which as great as they are - are very expensive. This car is kind of on a budget.

I've got a lot of research to do before I get into the EMS stage though, as far as the basics there is really nothing that concerns me. I'm not quite sure how the VTC comes into play on the vehicle with EMS, and I haven't even looked into ignition timing yet. So much to do, with so little time/money...

My buddy and I have always talked about how unique it would be to do a VH swap to an FC.

GL dude!

jwt has a good program that usees a reflashed stock q45 ecu, but i dont know how cheap the service is

update?

Sorry, I actually have some updates - I've been really busy with work and the e30 lately. My welder took a crap on me, so that's slowed me down a lot. I'm 90% done with the headers - which I'm going to chalk up as learning experience. I've never made headers before and they are a freaking nightmare to make. I have the driver side done, and only need to finish one runner on the passenger side.

I finished the transmission bracket and got that in there - that will be interesting as it's a solid mount now.

I took a slow-down recently as my direction with the car might be changing, Circuit Racing has gotten VERY expensive here - most open days are $300 a day for one driver now. So, I'm debating going for more of an SCCA build right now.

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. I'm sorry I sold this car to you. I knew Craig had done a real number on this but until I saw the pictures I had no idea. This was definitely a learning experience for me (I'm the one who financed this monstrosity) and I've come to the conclusion you cannot really trust anyone to work on a vehicle. I was so bitter about how this turned out and how royally f*** I was that I just wanted it out of my sight. I'm glad you are doing it right and that I'll get to see it sometime soon. Call me, brother, I owe you a beer.

some quality work there...